Preliminary Task- Lip Syncing
What is lip syncing?
Lip-syncing is the process of miming in synchronisation with a pre-recorded soundtrack or speech. It is most commonly used by singers but is also used by actors and even in video games. The artist will have already recorded themselves singing a song in a studio, this is where conditions are optimal and so the song will sound the best it possibly could. Lip-syncing is used when the artist is performing live, instead of them actually singing, they mime along to the pre-recorded song. This ensures that nothing can go wrong and that the performance will be of a high standard.
Lip-syncing is also used in music videos, this allows the video to have more going on, such as dancing and allows the artist to do other things in the video. The quality of the song is also higher and so is a suitable audio stimuli to accompany the visual of the video. If a video is lip-synced, it also allows the video to be more edited and flexible with what it can include, lip-syncing in videos allows the artist to dance without sounding out of breath. Editing is also made more effective with lip-syncing as the track can be much easier to manipulate and the timing can be made perfect.
Lip-syncing, however, has caused a lot of controversy over the years. Many people believe that lip-symcing ruins the experience of listening to an artist live. Some people also think that lip-syncing should only be done in videos and not live, as people actually pay for the live experience and can listen to the lip-sync version virtually anywhere. It is often seen as an easy way out for the artist and if an artist is caught lip-syncing, it can damage their reputation. It can leave people questioning the genuine talent the artist has.
Below are some examples of lip-syncing performances that have recieved widespread media attention and have caused controversy.
There is also an argument that lip-syncing is necessary at times, many people have put forth that sometimes an artist may have no choice but to lip-sync, here are some examles that have been used:
1) Illness or a lost voice majorly interferes with an artists ability to sing to their full talent, if this happens and the artist chooses to go ahead with a performance (due to a contract or simply not wanting to dissapoint fans) then lip-syncing is thought to be an effective alternative.
2) In some cases, a song is done with a complementing dance routine, however, in a live performance this causes the artist to go out of breath and not sing very well, there are some who can do both very well, but usually the artist does not have the lung capacity to be able to do both. In this case, many people think that lip-syncing should not be frowned upon.
3) Another reason that many people have less sympathy for is that the artist may not have enough time to rehearse a performance and so lip-syncing may be a final resort.
4) Lip-syncing also saves money for the record label or people who orgnise the show as they just need to put on some pre-recorded tracks, and nothing new needs to be done.
Our Prelim Lip-Sync Music video (I Really Like You - Carly Rae Jepsen)
For our Prelim task, we had to create our very own lip-sync video. My group consisted of 4 members: Myself, Rob, Josh and Jonny. We decided that it would be best to pick a song that was released rather recently, so people who watched it would be able to relate with it, as well as it being seen as 'different'. We also decided that it would be more effective to display our lip-syncing skills, and editing, if we picked a song that was quite fast paced and had reasonably fast lyrics. The song we chose was I Really Like You by Carly Rae Jepsen. Another advantage of picking this song is that in the original video, lip-syncing is done throughout, so we followed its conventions and also made sure that our video had the same humorous persona to it. The whole group starred in the video and we also needed help from a friend, we asked our friend Josh to be in the video and agreed. The video is shown below.